Trouble

Yesterday the news about the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith's (CDF) assessment of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR) broke and since then trouble has been brewing.  The responses from the laity and the women religious alike in social media does not surprise me.  I often wonder where that support is when sisters and nuns are not under direct attack.  Those outside of this debate, or these developments, will pounce upon how the Vatican is persecuting women religious. They will see it as a sign of the Church's subjugation of women.  Everything will be so very clear and awful in the media.  Some commentators will be truly sympathetic, others will just salivate over all this mess.

And it is a mess and awful and hurtful and so frustrating.  As an historian of women religious in America, I have become very familiar with congregations of sisters and nuns and their contribution to the American Catholic Church and to the larger American society.  They have been and continue to be champions of the poor and forgotten.  They are so much more than simply teachers, nurses, social workers, and administrators.  They are not living saints (though I often feel like they are), but deeply committed to their ministries; they are remarkable women of faith.

Here are some interesting examples of support:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/20/opinion/american-nuns-conscience-and-the-vatican.html?_r=1

http://twitter.com/#!/search/%23WhatSistersMeantoMe

Now for Something Completely Different

I did something I haven't done in a very long time this past weekend.  When I say a very long time, I mean decades.  It has been decades since I have done something like this.  I attended a Mass in an unconventional location.  (I did this a couple years ago, but it was conventional in its planning.)  Anyhow, I attended a Mass said by a priest in a very informal setting.  Very few people attended.  It was a mixed faith crowd and everyone participated in some way.

And it was both weird and nice.  And touching on a spiritual level.  It was weird in the setting and the make-shift elements.  Now don't get me wrong, no church laws were broken in the performance of this Mass.  (No one will be excommunicated.)  The interesting thing was that there was this man, who is a priest, who led the show and was what one hopes a priest would be: pastoral.  And parts were divvied up (readers, distributors of communion, so forth.) There was even a homily.  The whole thing was intentional.

Why was it like this?  Is it because I was involved in some way?  Or the smallness of the gathering made me feel a part of something larger?  How do I capture that experience every week?  I won't have the same opportunity for such a celebration any time soon.

Well, this is less a post, than a musing.